Pigs Get Press, Press Press Back

In part because their cameras captured police actions in a way that was difficult for police testimony to refute, photographers sometimes found themselves harassed and arrested by police.

In this set of two incidents in May 1969 — shortly after the “Bloody Thursday” melee over People’s Park — photographer Nacio Jan Brown found himself arrested and his camera rolls exposed in the first, and found himself dragged to a police wagon with a club at his neck in the second.

According to the Barb, Brown’s harassment at the hands of the police was part of a much larger pattern that touched journalists and photographers in the mainstream press (AP, San Francisco Chronicle, Daily Cal) as well as the underground (Berkeley Barb, Good Times).